A blog and event series led by Professors David Schanzer
and Don Taylor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Social media: problem or panacea?

In 2011, the Brookings Institution
hosted a discussion on three possible ways social media could potentially
impact the 2012 presidential election. They posited social media could
spur civic involvement in the following ways: 1) social networks act as trust
filters for politically interested individuals, so greater use of this
tool would engender greater political effectiveness, 2) social media will act
as a grassroots network for the public to voice their opinions and promote
their ideas, and 3) politicians can/will utilize geo-location and behavioral
advertising to better target and galvanize voters.

So, has social media impacted public
involvement in politics over the past year? According to arecent
NPR storyandPew
Research Center data, only 2% of people sought election news from
Twitter, 3% from YouTube, and 6% from Facebook. Thus, when it comes to
political news voters still rely on old media for their information.

Should we assume that the large push
toward social media will peter out, with this finding? Is social media useless
in the political realm? No--while social media may not be a large news source
for many individuals, I believe it will serve dual functions in the next
election, both of which serve politicians. First, social media will help elected
officials target opinion in hyper-local ways, strengthening their campaign
strategy. Second and perhaps more importantly, candidates will be able to
respond to not only public concerns more quickly, but also to attacks from the
other side. This lightening quick response rate was seen recently with
the back-and-forthdiscussionbetween President Obama and Mitt
Romney over a "woman's right to work."As
noted by an NPR guest columnist, is the news cycle shortening to mere
moments? Only time will tell to see what social media's role will be in
the 2012 election, political civility and polarization in our elected
bodies.

3 comments:

I look forward to seeing more data on the effects of social network sites on the 2012 campaigns. The sector of civic involvement I am most interested in is the idea of grassroots networking combined with geo-location and behavioral advertising. Social networking sites like Facebook do a good job of absorbing information about personal taste and opinion and creating advertisements and general messages that would best suit that individual. It will only be a matter of time until candidates are successfully using this tool to match their platforms with individual voters that could have similar interests. Furthermore the idea of receiving input and creating a connection with voters is something that will definitely help candidates express their opinions and address concerns and criticisms in a new light. I agree with Mim and can only see these percentages increasing after future elections.

I think social media will have a large role in the upcoming campaign. I think innovative ways to send a message across will always be effective. While it might have negative effects of sometimes oversimplifying narratives, can't that be a good thing for candidates? If a candidate can pack their message into 120 characters for a tweet, it's much more digestible for the average American. While the packaging can be difficult, it bears an important aspect of gaining support.

Mastering campaigning in the realm of social media is a must for any presidential campaign. Social Media allows candidates to simply their messages and blast to the masses. These messages will also hold candidates more accountable as sites like Twitter require very short statements, taking out a lot of the grey area on policy stances. By allowing a more open and direct dialogue between candidates and constituents, social media will continue to hold candidates accountable.